It must be remembered that Hollywood is a world unto itself – a hubbub of a bubble; the ultimate echo chamber.

And this year the cries bouncing off that bubble and echoing around in that chamber is that Damien Chazelle’s “La La Land” is the musical masterpiece of the year.

We beg to differ.

After a recent viewing of “La La Land” with an average audience – not an “industry” audience, mind you – the crowd upon exiting was left muttering “what were all those critics talking about?”

What we saw was a mumbling, disjointed mish-mash with not one memorable song or performance. Ryan Gosling did his best with the material he was given but playing against Emma Stone he might as well have been hitting tennis balls against a brick wall. Stone’s acting goes from A to Z with nothing in between. No shading. We get the tearing, blurting bits that we saw so well in, well, “Birdman,” for example. And she keeps throwing that back at us.

As musicals go, this one didn’t. Go.

From the opening sequence, once the actors open their mouths to sing the words got lost and we knew we were in the hands of a second-rate director. The composition within the frame was crowded and without perspective, not unlike a smartphone user who’s never sure where the action is so they just point where the movement goes. Cinematography is an art. A cinematographer has a grand vision that encompasses light, composition, movement, depth, color all in a complex language that conveys a dramatic purpose to a film.

In “La La Land” the cinematography was non-existent.

And don’t give any credence to those critics who cite the beauty of the “shots” such as Griffith Park. A camera held still and rolling “film” on an object is not cinematography.

Most of the scenes in “La La Land” were so underlit that Stone and Gosling’s faces were in shadow. And when they are supposed to be singing, audiences want to SEE the mouths of the actors.

Dramatic tension. As in Chazelle’s “Whiplash” this film has a tacked-on, fake dramatic turning point that comes out of nowhere and appears in one scene at a dining table. Coming from left field, audiences are blind-sided. “Well, guess we’re going in that direction.”

Chazelle is still an immature filmmaker. Here he’s not unlike a trolley car driver who’s got his passengers on a trip then decides to jump the track. Passengers – except for gullible Hollywood-ites – don’t enjoy bumpy rides.

The most egregious example of a director who is clueless over what to do with a musical bit is Stone’s little audition song toward the end. It’s meant to be powerful yet, Chazelle has Stone frozen in place, not moving a muscle, under a hard spot, for the entire song. We’ve never seen someone sing a song as if they were standing in front of a firing squad, but this bit would surely qualify.

The film’s ending is an example of what happens when you give a director final cut. They always find a way to make it longer and confusing and waste any goodwill they might have garnered from the audience up until that point.

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There’s more. Much, much more.

And we’ll write about that when we find the time.

At this point we’ll remind everyone to rush out and see Hollywood’s fav flick from last year – “The Revenant.”

Oh, you don’t want to waste your time on that boring slogfest, either.

Yes. Donald Trump talked with the democratically elected president of Taiwan.

Why shouldn’t he. Why the hell should the most powerful nation in the world let Communist China tell it who it can and cannot talk to? THAT is the question.

The national media – including The New York Times – is equating Trump’s conversation with Taiwan’s president as if it were an act of war with China. It’s not.

It’s called Freedom of Speech.

Why can’t the US president speak with Taiwan’s president? Oh. It’s that Jimmy Carter agreement way back when that essentially…well, what DID we gain from letting Communist China become a massive pain in the arse to the world as a whole? What DID we gain by recognizing Communist China and throwing small, independent, democratic Taiwan under the bus?

Well, we threw away our principles, for one thing.

Why would we abandon Taiwan, a country that has come to more closely resemble the democratic, free-thinking values of the United States? Why would we instead allow Communist China free access to all our markets so that it could take unfair trade advantage and fundamentally alter the American economy so that it will NEVER be the same? So that China’s unfair trade advantage has allowed it not only to steal jobs from Americans but to amass trillions of dollars that it has used and is currently using to purchase American corporations and manufacturing sites and tracts of real estate so that America’s resources have essentially been transferred wholesale across the Pacific to Chinese control?

Why does everyone screaming in the press seem to think that Communist China can dictate who the American president can talk to on the telephone?

Oh. It’s all the same people who were so blindered for years with outdated values that they thought putting Hillary Clinton up for president was going to be a great move forward for this country.

Uh, huh.

Once you let a bully start dictating what you can do, that bully controls you.

It’s time to stop the mindset that Communist China sets policy for the world. It’s time that the United States starts setting an example by showing leadership.

[This is in no way an endorsement for Donald Trump. It is an endorsement for a change in foreign policy.]

For years The New York Times has kneeled down before the powers of Communist Mainland China and refused to acknowledge in print that the free island nation Taiwan, the Republic of China, is a sovereign nation independent from the corrupt, criminal communist mainland China.

That, apparently, has changed.

In an opinion piece published in The Times on Saturday, 26 November 2016, the editorial writers clearly stated:

“Taiwan should become another nation to recognize that love is love, regardless of sexual orientation.”

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The definition of nation clearly states that it is “independent” and a “sovereign state.”

Never before has The New York Times ever admitted that Taiwan was anything other than a renegade province of the communist mainland China. This is the Party line that Mainland China has forced upon news corporations and businesses and even the United Nations in its attempts to isolate the democratic nation of Taiwan.

Communist China has used its police powers and its power over who is allowed to do business in the country to keep countries and corporations bowing down to them for decades and most countries and corporations have willingly taken the boot of the communists and shined it clean for the sake of their own profits.

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We congratulate The New York Times for their brave, courageous stance, knowing they alone are standing against a tidal wave of forced economic censorship and the military brutality that Communist China threatens Taiwan with every day.

(Then again, we’re probably pretty sure it’s the really inexperienced punk writers that The Times has recently hired that made this massive error. And NYT’s publisher A.O. Sulzberger, Jr. will soon be called onto the carpet and forced to kowtow to the Communist bullies from the mainland so he will be able to keep doing business over there.)

The news is that AT&T is ready to buy Time-Warner in an $80 Billion dollar vertical integration deal that is sure to screw over American consumers for decades to come.

Consumers in America – who already pay more for Internet service than any First World country, and receive the slowest service for their money – will be seeing higher pricers with fewer choices from this far from Free-Market deal.

We are used to hearing about corrupt Russian business oligarchs who are friends of Dictator Putin who get the best deals and screw Russian citizens.

We are used to hearing about corrupt Chinese businessmen, all former Red Army generals who get cosy business deals thanks to connections with the Communist Party and ride those connections to $Billions of profits to be secreted away safely overseas.

Now we are becoming regularly treated to US corporations who use cheap, easily borrowed money to become larger or buy related businesses so they can completely control markets and product distribution, thereby reducing consumers to slaves to price rises, sloppy products and less choice.

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We in the US are wrapping up the most contentious presidential election in recent history. Yet, income inequality – the most important issue of the election – has not been mentioned since Bernie Sanders dropped out of the race.

And that is important.

The most recent economic theorists have determined that corporations use behavioral analysis to drive profits.

From this they have deduced: Ignorant, confused, distracted consumers are their ideal targets.

And that is what America is turning out. A nation of consumers with their faces stuffed into their smart phones. Unengaged. Essentially, suckers.

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Ford Motor Corp. recently announced they are moving all small car manufacturing down to Mexico. Why? “That’s what our consumers want!” Yes, that was what Henry Ford’s grandson actually said.

Apparently he forgot his grandfather started mass producing automobiles – and employing US workers – so that his workers and those like them could buy good affordable cars. Now, Ford wants consumers to buy big, gas guzzling trucks because that’s where Ford makes the biggest profit margins, so THAT’S what Ford will still produce in the US.

Corporate greed that shortsightedly kills the jobs and well-being of American workers where Ford sits back making millions for executives and stockholders.

There used to be a balance in American corporate boardrooms.

No more.

It’s strip the land – and workers – bare and take all that you can and leave nothing while filling your coffers with cash.

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All things are cyclical, including business practices. This rampant “Free-Market” – we’ll call it what it really is – “Rape-The-Consumer-Market” – might turn when American business schools, incubators of corporate leaders, start teaching methods that inculcate sustainable business practices.

We’ll see. It works in other countries where they place the good of the whole above No Good For Any. Go ahead: Study the world economics and see.

What you will discover is that America and its political climate where corporate money buys politicians and their votes is on a rapid downward spiral with the superwealthy taking a proverbial piss over the mass majority of Americans – and those Americans not even knowing enough to get their umbrellas out.

In 1972 during the atrocious US napalm bombings of Vietnam there was an iconic photo taken and later published around the world of a Vietnamese girl fleeing naked from a napalm attack.

The photo was published on the front page of the New York Times in 1972 and was named World Press Photo of the Year for 1972. It was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Journalism. Kim Phuc, the victim, is still alive and is now a citizen of Canada. Her story is a brave and remarkable one.

Zuckerberg and Facebook, who want to be All Things To All The World, have taken the dirty curbside vision perspective that the napalm photo of Kim Phuc is offensive to the world in ways that only Zuckerberg and Facebook can determine and therefore cannot be sent over their monstrously Orwellian social website.

Zuckerberg’s motivations cannot even be guessed at, but they eventually, always end at one point: Profits. And the motive not to offend massive profit-centered, censorship-heavy markets like Communist China.

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We hear Donald Trump and Roger Ailes are planning their own bizarro news network after the 2016 election.

Mark Zuckerberg has already crafted his own twisted vision of the world with Facebook where “social interaction” is another term for squeezing money from suckers.

Zuckerberg’s company was recently punished in India for their scheme in supposedly giving “free access” to the internet but the Indian government found it was tied into Facebook advertising. That’s called Bait and Switch.

Nothing is as it seems in Zuckerberg’s Crafted World View. It’s as old as William Randolf Hearst and the Spanish-American War. (Look it up.)

In a headline-shrieking story in today’s The Daily Beast dubious “journalist” Clive Irving does all he can to deny that Malaysian Air flight MH370 pilot Zaharie Shah hijacked the plane in a murder/suicide plot.

The Daily Beast’s Irving failed to mention many facts in the case, including that MH370 Pilot Shah’s family left his house the day before the flight departed and have never been heard from since. Supposedly they were “in government care.”

No mention has ever been made of any attempts to interview his wife and son. Wouldn’t that be a basic starting point for ANY investigation?

Also, a small point. Irving makes it sound as if Pilot Shah merely had a computer with a flight program on it. Rather, he had an entire mock cockpit set up in his house with his computer. More than just someone “fooling around” on his laptop.

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Importantly, Irving goes out of his way to make it sound as if the Malaysian government has been putting forth the theory of the “pilot hijack,” but that is absolutely the opposite of the facts. The Malaysian government has done EVERYTHING to divert attention away from ANY culpability toward Pilot Shah OR the government-owned airline – Malaysian officials knew this would not only make them LEGALLY liable for the disaster but POLITICALLY liable for the disaster as well.

This very salient point seems to fly right over the head of supposed aviation “expert” Irving.

It is and has been far more acceptable to the repressive Malaysian government to allow bogus terrorist, alien, enemy-fire or whatever theories to float about than to ever get to the truth of what really caused flight MH370 to crash and kill all aboard.

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We are left wondering how it is that The Daily Beast allows such sloppy, factually inaccurate and meretricious stories to be published under their banner.